Gothic Beam Steam Engine Build

[maury]

Well Folks, after a couple of months dealing with family issues, waiting for castings, and then the holidays, I'm getting back into the saddle. Had some time to work on the Cross Head parts on the Gothic. I made new castings for the Cross Head, didn't like the design on the original kit, and I made them more like the original engine. The Cross Head has 5 castings now, and a pin for the piston rod which is slotted on the ends for the Cross Head Columns.

There is a little hitch still carried over from the original kit which I need to address. The bases of the Columns bolt into the top of the cylinder, but the hole pattern is too small for the screw heads. So I had to notch out a bit of the base of the columns.

Over all it looks good, and it works fine. Have a look.

maury

[b.lindsey]

Good to see you back at it Maury, I think the last few months have been a busy time for many of us!!

Bill

[Don1966]

Wow! A few months and a whole lot of progress. She's shaping up nicely and I love the look so far. Nice work Maury and will be waiting for more progress.................

Don

[steam guy willy]

just seen this build, lovely looking engine and interesting construction ,good work going on here.

[maury]

Guys, thanks for the supportive comments and staying tuned in.

I have a little more progress made in the last couple of days. It seems steam engines are mostly made of flanges and bolt circles. A lot of drilling and tapping here.

These are the low pressure pump and steam condenser.

maury

[maury]

W had a few relatively warm days this week, so I was able to spend some time in the wood shop on the Structure for the Gothic.

One thing you might notice in the first pic is the brass inserts. I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with this idea, but here goes. I made some knurled plugs. 1/2" long out of 1/4 brass rod and tapped the ends. they were then glued into the structure with JB Weld. I can now mount my engine with studs instead of ugly wood screws. It seems to work quite well so far, We'll see how long they last.

THe remainder if the pics show the structure made of Red Mahogany and some plywood for the flywheel well. I covered the appropriate parts with some stone I found in the wall covering section at Home Depot.

I used the CNC to releave the patterns on the sides of the base, these were sketches I already made for modeling the engine in Solidworks. They add a nice touch.

maury

[yogi]

Fantastic work! Thank you very much for sharing.
What are you using for the stone? Is it even stone? or something else? It looks great!

yogi

[Dave Otto]

Hi Maury

Good to see progress on the Gothic Beam Engine; it sure looks nice!

I was also wondering about the stone work on your base; what is the material and are you planning to grout it?

Dave

[wagnmkr]

Lovely work. Are they the stone material you can buy to do a back splash with?

Tom

[b.lindsey]

I like that Maury, a classic look to go with a classic engine.

Bill

[zeeprogrammer]

Like Bill said...classic.

I was wondering about the stone too. Looks great!

[steam guy willy]

Guys, thanks for the supportive comments and staying tuned in.

I have a little more progress made in the last couple of days. It seems steam engines are mostly made of flanges and bolt circles. A lot of drilling and tapping here.

These are the low pressure pump and steam condenser.

maury

Hi, Can i ask if this will be run on steam with a working condenser as the Beenleigh mill engine has a similar arrangement. There do not seem to many engines built like this and i am making this engine with only the outside of the castings to look at. It would be interesting to view any of the porting arrangements if this is designed to be a working engine. Also is there a jet condenser operating lever used when starting the engine ? Thanks for any info,
regards
Willy

[Don1966]

Cool look Maury.............   


Don

[maury]

Guys, thanks for all the nice compliments, I appreciate it.

Steam GUY: Initially I wanted to run this build on steam. After a lot of issues last fall and having
too many projects in the works I decided building a boiler was not in the cards.I'm still open to buying
one if I can find one I can trust.

I bought this design from Historic Model Design, and the way he designed it, the LP pump, Condenser, and
HP pump are all nonfunctional. If I were to run it on steam I would redesign this and make it all working.

So, it seems there is some onterest in the stonework.Initially, I thought of making modle size bricks out
of ceramic. This would have required me to setup molds, a slip station, and, some kind of glaze setup,
and finally finding someone to fire the ceramic. I'm sure they would have looked authentic, but seemed
like a lot of work.The arguement for it would have been, be amount of work is too much to make a model
look great.

So, I was at Home Depot one day and thought og the Gothic while shopping.I went to the Aisle with the
floor and wall tile, and found a few possibilities, then ran across these sheets of minature stones.
I bought some! THey are about .34" square and ramdom lengths. THere are 4 or 5 different kinds/colors
of stone in a random pattern, just perfect.

I removed them from the sheets, and found the backs needed to be sanded to remove the hot glue. I was
able to just use wood glue to attach the stone to the wood background, since the stone is porus it sticks
 well.

As far as the grouting goes, I decided that would be too messy for this small stone. I've groutes stone
before and found it difficult to get clean edges between the stone and grout. I just glued the stone as
close as I could.

maury

[steam guy willy]

HI, Maury, Thanks for the info, This is good accurate work so it would not need much to bring it into steam, However model boilers are quite varied and need to be fully functioning of course.I have made a few that are electrically heated with 'Cartridge heaters" ,fortunately i had an electronics friend to design a fully functioning and reliable circuit with safety devices to make them work safely. Keep up the good work, it will be a fine miniature when completed,
Willy.